Not every one of us is comfortable having a 9 to 5 career. Here is an amazing article written by blogging guru Steve Pavlina on “10 Reasons you should never get a Job”.Working on our own is adventurous and ultimate liberty! Choosing something we love and getting paid for it is awesomeness! If you love recruitment and wish to work on it and get paid for it, without being questioned or policed by your team leader or manager here is the 6 step guide that will help you become a freelance recruiter.
1. Getting Started
Learning Recruitment: Firstly get your hands on recruitment. If you are a fresher, join in any consulting company as a trainee recruiter and learn how to recruit candidates for different positions from different domains. Ideally you have to have at least 12 to 18 months experience in sourcing candidates from various levels which boosts your confidence to start on your own. If you are from HR background but worked as a generalist all your life, best advice is to learn recruitment from your present team. Spend time with your recruiting team, learn how they are sourcing, what are the different sourcing strategies they are applying for each and every open position. If you are an experienced recruiter, just get started with freelance recruiting and keep going after choosing the niche industry!
Choosing Niche/Industry: Once you are confident in sourcing, choose the niche industry you are going to benchmark. Though many recruiters chase on every open position that comes their way, it is ideal to establish yourself as a niche recruiter which gives you the advantage of establishing your brand to most of the corporate recruiters in that particular field. Do extensive research on which industry to choose. Focus either on information technology, non IT or BPO sector and establish yourself as the pioneer freelancing recruiter in that niche.
Choosing Candidate Level: Will you be sourcing white collar candidates or blue collar candidates? If you are determined to hire only blue collar candidates, ensure that you have an excellent resource, network and contacts to pull the required blue collar candidates. If you are finalized to hire white collar employees, it sub sects into the recruitment of entry level employees, junior executives, experienced professionals, middle managers, senior managers and top executives. Top executives are only approached through headhunting which is a strenuous but challenging recruitment that yields amazing income for a freelancing recruiter.
2. Basic Requirements
Any freelancer requires only handy tools to kick start the project. Likewise becoming a freelance recruiter requires a laptop or desktop, internet connection and a telephone/mobile phone as the basic necessities to get started. Nowadays none of us are void of these instruments which lessen the burden of buying new assets to start a freelancing business.Advantage of being a freelance recruiter is, you can live a minimalist life removing all the taboos and clutters from your life. Freelance recruitment requires just few tools to get started and gives you ultimate freedom of simplicity and mindfulness.
3. Defining fee structure
The market standard is one month pay of the candidate. If you are hiring for middle or senior level positions, you can define and demand sourcing fee from your clients accordingly. Since the recruitment market is too crowded and polluted, many clients will negotiate to greater extents below the market standard. It is your responsibility to convince the client expressing your uniqueness and why they should pay them what you demand. Educate your clients on, your industry expertise, your candidate base, your sourcing turnaround time, quality of your candidates and sourcing strategies you follow for vacant positions. Let your clients thoroughly understand, how strong you are in the above fields, and then it would be easy on your part to win clients and the fee structure you define.
4. Acquiring Clients
Being a freelance recruiter, your profit comes from clients. Inorder to have a steady stream income, have 4 to 5 corporate clients who are amazing in on time payment.
How to find your loyal clients and how to increase your client base?
Initially you will learn it through trial and error. Find clients through references. Go through job boards, newspaper advertisements, online advertisements and company’s career websites inorder to understand which companies are hiring presently. You can find their contact details and cold call them. Reach the decision makers and fix up an appointment to meet them. All you do is sales, and you got be excited about it to crack the market! If you are present in recruiting industry for longer timespan, you could ask people in your network to provide references. It is pretty easy to win the deal when you approach through known references.
5. Acquiring Candidate Database
Initially newspaper advertisements are the predominant source of hiring but job boards tremendously changed the way recruitment has been done all these years. Now is the time for social media hiring. Most of the companies are hiring via online social media websites like LinkedIn, twitter and facebook. If you would like to get great in online recruiting, develop your online presence as a hiring professional. Showcase yourself as a potential recruiter inorder to increase your target network.
What differentiates a recruiter from awesome recruiter is the way they connect with a candidate. There is no point in having hundreds of professionals in your social networking communities without engaging with them. Just don’t add contacts, develop professional discussions with each of your new contact, and let them remember your conversations with them, so that when you reach a particular candidate with a job offer, the hiring process will be easy to kick start to further levels. Developing your contacts through social media is free but takes immense time and effort. At last it is worth all your efforts! Investing on job board is also an ideal option to fetch candidates faster but if you are looking to hire passive candidates, networking, referrals and headhunting are the finest options.
6. Network Vigorously
If you want to get potential clients: network, network more, network more than that. Participate in online and offline forums, join in HR networks, take part in networking events, connect with industry experts, organization’s decision makers, corporate HR managers, Directors, VPs & C level executives through social media websites. Develop slower connections with them but ensure to have steady ones. When you have contacts with decision makers of companies, they would love to hear what are you upto and your present endeavors. They will surely offer to help you by giving recruiting business that will fetch you decent revenue. If you want to shine as a freelance recruiter, do smart networking. Connect vigorously.
Final Thoughts
Define your own working hours! Set your own Rules! Live a life of liberation!
Freelance recruiting career is an amazing option for individuals with entrepreneurial spirit.
Just get started.
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